


in a garden of words

by PinkHydrangea



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: Archanea and Valentia having the same language?? wack, F/M, Language Barrier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 13:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13148001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkHydrangea/pseuds/PinkHydrangea
Summary: It's hard, Ezekiel thinks, to not speak the same language as the person you love, and it is harder still to learn their tongue. But, he will be damned if he doesn't try.





	in a garden of words

**Author's Note:**

  * For [4wholecats](https://archiveofourown.org/users/4wholecats/gifts).



> HAPPY HOLIDAYS SAM!!! this fic is based off of a concept that we both enjoy and lightly discussed in the tatizeke discord server: Language barrier au, bc archanea and valentia having the same languages?? wack
> 
> ANYWAY, i love this concept so much and wanted to make it really good for Sam, so i actually got carried away... i intended to make it a really long oneshot, but uhhh i was so busy during the end of the semester and the holiday season that i didn't wind up getting the whole entire thing done exactly the way i wanted, so i decided to split it up into two parts to ensure quality!! i'll try to have the second part up before the end of the year so it's still released within the holiday season area of time
> 
> AGAIN, HAPPY HOLIDAYS SAM!!! AAA IM SO GLAD I GOT TO BE YOUR GIFTER PERSON

Four days and seven hours, and Tatiana’s mystery man still hasn’t woken up.

“A man?” people ask. “You just found him? On the beach? That’s like-”

Like something out of a fairy tale. Yes, Tatiana knows. She knows it’s not commonplace for the average village cleric like her to pull a handsome man out of the sea and bring him back to life. She knows that, and she doesn’t need all of her neighbors and friends coming in and saying, “Gracious, Tatiana, you’re a regular storybook lass, aren’t you?”

Tatiana gets blood on her every day, is tired, hungry, worried, and doesn’t feel like a “regular storybook lass,” but she doesn’t say that to them. She only smiles and asks them to leave her and her patient be.

“But where did he come from?” the church’s head priest asks. “He doesn’t look familiar. Nobody in the local towns or villages seems to be missing any family. So who-?”

“I don’t know, Father Alexi,” Tatiana replies. Her mystery man grumbles in his sleep, so she hops off of her perch and shushes him, patting down his hair and fluffing his pillows. When done, she pulls the scrappy coat of whatever clothes he had been wearing off of the side and holds it out to the priest. “He was wearing this, but I don’t see anything that could be telling.”

Alexi hums and scratches his jaw. “I see nothing either. Nothing Rigelian, at least.”

She tilts her head. “Do you think he could be foreign? That would be so odd. Valentia doesn’t see many foreigners outside of merchants, but I think if a merchant had gone missing, there’d be more uproar about it.”

“He could be foreign,” he muses. “He’s got features that aren’t quite Rigelian, but not quite Zofian, either.”

Tatiana sighs, shakes her head, and figures that where he comes from doesn’t matter. They’ll get all that information from him when he wakes up. It’s just a matter of when, and she hopes that “when” is soon.

* * *

 

The man wakes up on the seventh day in the late morning, mumbling and blinking open his eyes. Tatiana waits by his bed, waiting for him to fully awaken and acknowledge her. When his eyes are open, he’s clearly lucid, and looking about in bewilderment, she says, “Oh, you’re awake!”

His head snaps over to her, the expression on his face panicked. He doesn’t say anything, and so Tatiana simply figures that he’s tired and too confused to really be able to start speaking off the bat. But, there’s something a little uncomprehending in his eyes that unsettles her.

“Are you alright?” she asks. “Do you need anything? Water? Food? You did practically come back from the dead.”

He keeps staring at her, and then he finally opens his mouth. Tatiana waits patiently, but nothing comes from him except a string of gibberish that stops her heart.

Foreigner indeed.

* * *

 

It took a moment to settle the stranger down, because after realizing that he could not understand her, and that she could not understand him, he’d understandably panicked. He’d been too weak to get himself out of bed though, and he’d collapsed atop her the second he’d tried standing. With more than a little difficulty, Tatiana had managed to get him back into the bed, though he’d glared at her and continued jabbering at her in his language.

“This is a safe place,” she’d attempted to reassure, but she hadn’t really known how to communicate that through charades. Eventually, after showing him a collection of staves, medicine, and having him take a good look at her clothes, he’d seemed to realize that he was in a church. After that, he’d calmed down a little, though still appeared nervous, and drifted back to sleep after his little panic attack.

“I don’t know what language he’s speaking. It’s not even a Zofian dialect,” Tatiana tells another cleric. “It sounded so… so-!”

“Foreign?”

“Foreign,” she agrees. “Kinda longer and more drawn out than Rigelian. I have no clue where he could be from!”

“Father Alexi is clueless, too,” the sister says.

“I’m not sure how I’m supposed to communicate,” mumbles Tatiana. “I’m no good at charades. And-”

“What about pictures?” she suggests. “I have an extra drawing pad in my room, if you want it.”

To be honest, that’s a good idea, one that Tatiana can get behind. But, she frowns. “Oh, but paper is so expensive right now. Would you really be okay with that?”

The sister shrugs. “I think it’s probably a little more important for you to communicate with him than it is for me to be able to draw a few pictures. It’s no sweat off my back. Just pay me back sometime, okay?”

Tatiana promises a great number of times to pay her back as she is handed the paper and a charcoal pencil. The sister shrugs, waves her away, and goes back to her work. Tatiana, on the other hand, now has business with finding out who her mystery man is and where he is from.

She cooks a small, plain meal, easy on the stomach, and takes it to the infirmary with her. She wonders how long she’ll have to wait for him to wake up again, but fortunately, it’s not long at all. The moment she sets the tray of food down and makes herself comfortable on her stool, his eyes flicker open.

“You’re awake again,” she says quietly, hoping against hope that he’ll somehow magically understand her this time. Yet, he only turns his head to her, a frown on his face and a confused furrow to his brow. “You really don’t speak my language, do you?”

A deeper frown, and he shakes his head. “Je vous demande pardon.”

Tatiana takes a deep sigh, scratching behind her ear with the pencil. “And what you say is all gibberish to me. But we gotta communicate somehow to get you home.”

A moment of awkward silence passes. The stranger looks away, then sits up, hands in his lap politely. Tatiana gets a vibe off of him in the way he looks around, how he sits with his back straight and shoulders back. He’s formal. Polite. Confident, but not brashly so. There are muscles and angles of his body that make her think he might be a soldier, but also, he’s a little too thin compared to the soldiers she treats at the military base.

Thin.

“Oh!”

The stranger jumps and regards her with bewilderment. He watches, very wary, as Tatiana picks up the tray and holds it out to him. Food, she knows, is a universal language. If this doesn’t communicate the fact that she is friendly, she doesn’t know what will.

“You must be very hungry,” she says. “Here. It’s food. Eat.”

He narrows his eyes at it, then glares at her. He’s suspicious, so Tatiana puts the tray back down, takes the loaf of bread, and rips a piece off. His face softens as she takes a bite of each thing on the tray. When she’s finished proving it’s safe, she holds it back out, and this time he takes it.

“Merci beaucoup,” he mumbles.

She’s pretty sure that that’s a thank you, and she smiles in response.

While he eats, she picks the pad of paper up and shows it to him. He looks up from the meal and looks at it, tilts his head, and then says, “Qu'est-ce que ç'est?”

“Pictures,” she tells him. “Pictures are universal, right? We’ll just have to communicate by drawing, okay?”

The context of the situation and the pad of paper seems to help him put two-and-two together. He nods, finishes his meal, and sets aside the tray. Tatiana hums, tapping her heel against the floor, as she tries to figure out what to say first.

She puts the pencil to her chest instead of the paper, looks at him, and says, “Tatiana.”

He looks at her, a cute crinkle to his nose, and then seems to understand when she repeats. He echoes her name, holds a hand out, and shakes hers when she offers her own. He’s polite, most definitely, in posture and mannerisms, and she finds herself a little fond of it.

“Okay, question number one: What’s your name?”

But, when Tatiana points at him, he looks distraught, of all things. He seems smart, so he should be able to understand that she’s trying to ask his name. She asks again, her own confusion coming through, and his expression shifts from distraught to pensiveness, and then collapses into utter fear. He shakes his head, mumbling something that sounds like, “Je ne sais pas.”

“O-okay.” Tatiana feels a little uneasiness in the pit of her stomach now. She stops her hand from shaking as she puts the pencil to the paper, and she draws a very shoddy, but clear, picture of a house. “What about home? Where are you from?”

The stranger stares at it, looking very distant, and gestures for the pencil. A spark of hope flares in Tatiana as she passes it over. She watches as he puts the pencil to the paper, noting that he, too, is shaking. The tip of the pencil stays on the paper, unmoving. He stares at the picture she has drawn. She thinks he’s just taking a moment to figure out what to draw, and then he moves the pencil in two quick motions, making a symbol that is universal to the both of them.

Over the image of a home, he has simply drawn a large question mark.

Tatiana’s heart stops.

“Je vous demande pardon,” he says quietly. Tatiana starts to think that it means, “I’m sorry.”

“You don’t know?” she asks, just as quiet. “No name, no home… You don’t know them?”

He looks away.

She takes the paper and pencil from him, flips to a fresh page, and scrawls jumbled, hasty stick figures, all in a line. She flips it back towards him, tapping the page, and asks, “Family?”

The stranger stares at the page. Slowly, he looks up to her. His face holds some unreadable, dark expression, and he shakes his head.

“Oh,” she says. “You don’t have a single memory left, do you?”

Of course, he doesn’t know what she is saying. But he seems to know the tone of her voice, the sorrow in it, and turns his head away from her, like he’s ashamed. There is nothing to be ashamed of, however. It bothers her that he knows nothing of which he should be ashamed, and yet he still turns his eyes away.

Tatiana remembers his scars when she tended to him: Gouges and lashes from a whip alongside his back, long scars like slices from a dagger, burns on the palms of his hands that look too deliberate to have been caused by an accident. She’s read books, in her medical training, on the idea that notion that trauma can sometimes cause amnesia. It’s not something she is likely ever mention to him, but it makes sense

“No family,” she murmurs. “No home. No name. No nothing.”

He won’t look up.

Really, there is nothing else for Tatiana to do. They don’t speak the same language. They can’t communicate clearly. Not only is there nothing else for Tatiana to do, but she doesn’t even know what to do.

Except to lean forward without thinking and wrap him up in her arms.

He recoils, but it’s only for a moment. The stranger leans into her, eyes shut in relaxation, though he doesn’t embrace her back. Tatiana squeezes him and buries her face in his shoulder, puts a hand in his hair, and that’s all she knows she can do.

“You can stay here,” she whispers. “I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”

More than a little awkwardly, he hugs her back, holding her like she is going to break.

* * *

 

Three weeks pass, and Tatiana is delighted to find that the stranger is even smarter than she first thought. Everyday they sit down at a table, drawing pad between them, and she teaches him words. It’s hard to teach him things like sentence structure and phrases when there is no way to explain them to him, but he learns by example. When he follows her on her morning chores, he listens to her conversations with neighbors intensely, taking note on what she says when she greets them and bids them farewell. He even starts carrying around paper to write what he hears, but it’s not like anybody can say what he writes is correct or incorrect.

He picks up on things quick, though. He is now able to say, “Good morning, Tatiana. How are you today?” and other basic things such as, “Thank you,” or, “I’m sorry,” and, “You’re welcome.” In addition to that, their barebones lessons at the church’s kitchen table have taught him the names of different things, so even if he doesn’t know how to work it into conversation, he at least knows what an egg is called in Rigelian.

Today, Tatiana is delighted to find that immersion in the culture has allowed him to pick up on phrases on his own. They’re clumsy, halting, but they communicate his point. His voice is soft and gruff as he mutters them, embarrassed at his own speech. His accent, surprisingly, is very thin, and he emulates Rigelian sounds well.

“You sound good!” she encourages. “Clumsy, for sure, but you’re learning.”

Her sentences are probably too complex for him, but he catches the word “learning” and sighs with relief.

“I’m glad,” he says. “This is… hard.”

“I know,” Tatiana replies. “If only we could find someone who speaks your language… But it seems to be very foreign. Nobody else knows what you’re speaking.”

Again, probably too complex for him, but he still says, “I’m very sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “It’ll work out soon. You just need more time.”

“Time,” the stranger mumbles. “Time.”

“Time,” she repeats, looking around the room. “Like… Umm…”

He watches her, amused, and then gestures to the grandfather clock in the corner of the room. “Time,” he repeats. “I know. I am a fast learner.”

Tatiana smiles at him. “Say, how do you say that in your language?”

He lifts a brow. “Mine?”

“Yes.”

“L’heure,” he tells her.

She repeats it, rolling the word around his mouth. It sounds rough and crude when she says it, but when he speaks, it flows like a river. Such a simple word sounds so beautiful coming from him. As she becomes conscious of how much she likes hearing him speak his native language, she internally scolds herself for being no better than a sappy heroine in a bad romance novel.

Yet, Tatiana starts to become curious about how she sounds to him.

She doesn’t get to find out, however, because she leaves to go into town the next day. When she comes back, arms laden with food for a nice dinner that the two of them can share, she finds that Jerome has come by, accused him of being a spy, and spirited him away to the capital. Once more, she finds herself not knowing what to do, but she falls to her knees and weeps for her stranger.

* * *

 

The stranger doesn’t find it all that fair that he is being arrested when he can’t even defend himself. In fact, he’s not certain what he’s being arrested for. According to his knowledge, he hasn’t harmed anyone. He hasn’t stolen anything. He’s done nothing that could be considered illegal. He’s been on this continent for all of a month, and at least a week of that was spent unconscious. The other part has been in Tatiana’s company, either following her around during her chores or hunched over a table with her, learning her language.

He doesn’t think that those things are illegal.

He’d been coming back from a walk on the grasslands when they’d ambushed him. And, to his credit, he’d fought back well. Too well, in fact. So well that it had both shocked him and made the soldiers vastly more suspicious. Clocking one in the face so hard that the poor man had gone unconscious had rattled the stranger enough that they’d been able to gang up on him, knock him to the ground, and bind him.

He thinks it’s been two weeks or so, and now he’s in the cell of a damp dungeon somewhere far to the north of that little seashore village. Worse yet, he has no damned idea what any of these people are saying. There is no friendly, “Hello, how are you?” or, “Can I help you with that?” or, “This is an egg.”

Tatiana’s voice and the way she speaks is soft. Beautiful. Exquisite. When she speaks her language, it sounds like a melody, soothing and peaceful beyond anything else. He loves the sound of her voice, even when he doesn’t completely understand what it is she is saying. Even one word from her is like a symphony, and he has come to embrace the fact that, when he thinks that way, he sounds like some idiotic hero from a trashy romance novel.

But, when these men speak, it is hard and rough. It is cold and crude, the way they spit the word “отбросы!” at him with such vitriol. There are many more reasons to dislike them beyond the way they sound, such as the way they have locked him up and spat on him, but when he thinks of Tatiana, that is the most glaring difference between them that he can think of.

He misses the gentle lilt of her voice, the soothing way it sounds like a lullaby. The thought of her voice and gentle words, her beautifully colored hair, the pink of her lips is all that keeps him sane as he sits, rotting, in this dungeon cell.

Nobody except the occasional guard patrols past him for what might be four days. Yet, after might-be-four-days has passed, he receives a visitor. Their footsteps echo as they come down the stairs into the dungeon, firm and strong against the stone. The stranger figures that whomever is coming down is of no import to him. He stubbornly stares ahead at the wall of his cell, desperately trying to bring to mind the feeling of Tatiana’s gentle fingertips brushing over his wounds.

The visitor stops in front of his cell, however, and the stranger’s curiosity gets the better of him. He gives the visitor a passing glance: He is an old man, but still tall and strong, with a mane of white hair. He’s dressed impeccably in a military uniform and a long, sweeping cape, and his boots look to be of very fine leather.  He stands in front of the cell, observing the stranger with a perplexed expression.

“Don’t stare,” the stranger mutters in his own language, because his slight hold on the Rigelian language has slipped in the time he has been apart from Tatiana and other decent human interaction. “I don’t appreciate being ogled like a captive beast. Please, unless you’re here to take me to my fate, leave me be.”

The old man still says nothing. The stranger figures that he’s mumbling so quietly that he can’t be heard, but that’s fine. He has nothing else to say, and he looks away and goes back to minding his own business.

The old man stares at him, a tilt to his head, and then says, “Кто Вы? Как Вас зову́т?”

The stranger looks over, a little helplessly when he realizes he  _ really _ doesn’t understand a thing the old man is saying. Louder than his previous mumble, he says, “I don’t speak your language. I am sorry. I- Gods, you can’t even understand me.”

The old man’s eyes fly open wider. “Oh? Archanean? You do look like one.”

He sits there for a moment, staring at the old man blankly. “Uhhh.”

“Who are you?” the man asks. “An Archanean soldier? How did you get here?”

“Archanean?” he repeats, and the word feels familiar in his mouth. More than that, he feels so,  _ so _ relieved. For the first time in weeks, he can understand someone completely, and they can understand him. Finally, his language! “I’m- Uh- Y-you speak… my language?”

The old man’s face twists in confusion, and then softens just a little. “You came to Valentia without knowing the languages?”

“Not intentionally,” he snaps back, and then bites his tongue. “I fear I do not know who I am. I washed up here around a month ago, and I have no recollection of anything.”

The old man settles into a chair outside the cell. “An-” He seems to fumble with the word for a moment, but quickly says, “Amnesiac? All the way from Archanea?”

“Лгун!” The word is harsh, and he recognizes the voice. The soldier who had arrested him, a greasy-looking man with brown hair, comes down the stairs into the dungeon, staring snidely down his crooked nose at the stranger, and then bows politely to the old man.

They start speaking rapidfire in their native tongue, and all the stranger can do is sit there, trying to catch some words he knows, but he can’t keep up. He knows nothing of what they are saying, but he is able to tell from their interactions that they are both mad. But, the old man appears to be someone of great status, and the soldier cannot speak back to him. The soldier occasionally shoots him sharp glares, filled with fury, and after a long, long time, clenches his jaw, salutes, and leaves.

The old man sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose, and then looks back to him. “I’m sorry.”

The stranger looks to the corner of the cell. “Do not be sorry. But, I fear I don’t understand why I’ve been arrested. Could you possibly explain that?”

The old man hums, rubs his jaw. “From what Jerome has told me, he has arrested you under the notion that you are an Archanean spy.”

“‘A spy?’” he repeats incredulously. Desperate, he approaches the bars of the cell. “I’m no spy. I don’t remember anything about Archanea, if that’s where I hail from. You can use whatever magic you want to try and wrench the truth out of me, but I promise you, I’m simply a nameless man.”

A nameless man with no past and no future. It’s shameful.

The man glares at him for a while, completely silent, and then says, “Perhaps in time. For now, let’s get you out of there. You look like you could use some healing, a bath, and a good meal.”

The stranger looks up from his place on the ground, baffled. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t seem the criminal that Jerome says you are. You truly seem to just be a bedraggled man, and I doubt you were getting the care you needed in that little village he plucked you from.”

Defensive, he says, “I received excellent care there. I was found by a saint. I was in a wretched state when she found me. It’s a miracle I’m alive; a testament to her great talents.”

The old man appears amused as he unlocks the cell door. “A woman? You speak of her so fondly.”

He starts rambling a little, exhausted out of his mind and so,  _ so _ glad that he can finally speak and have someone understand. “She is all that I have. My- my only friend. Please, let me free. She must be worried sick. I have to get back to her.”

The old man rests a hand on his back as he emerges from the cell, helping to guide his unsure, weak legs up the stairs. “Calm yourself. We’re going to get you back to health first. If I sent you to travel back to the south right now, you’d die halfway there.”

The stranger settles himself down and accepts the help up the stairs. “Yes. I suppose that is right. Thank you.” He waits a moment while the old man opens up the dungeon’s door, and decides to ask, “May I ask your name? Who are you?”

The old man appears amused. “You truly know nothing of this place, do you?”

“I, well- I know nothing, that is true.”

“My name is Rudolf,” the old man says, swinging open the door for him. “I am the emperor of Rigel, my boy, and from this day forward, your benefactor.”

Oh, boy.

* * *

 

“So, no name?” Rudolf muses.

The stranger grimaces as a servant scrubs him particularly hard, cleaning the caked blood off of his back. There are two of them there, despite his insistences that he was not so weak that he could not bathe himself. They poke and prod, scrub his scalp raw, pull his limbs out of the water with no forewarning so they can wash him. One of them moves towards his privates, and angry, he snatches the sponge away from him. He can do  _ that _ part by himself, thank you very much.

“I have one. Probably.” The stranger waits while a servant yanks his arm out of the water to scrub under his nails. “I just cannot remember it.”

“How do you feel about a new name?” Rudolf asks.

The stranger stays quiet, watching as the dirt and blood under his nails slowly disappears. “I… would like my old name back, in all honesty. But I fear that that is not possible. So, I believe a new name is better than no name at all.”

The emperor smiles, leaning back in his chair, and scratches his beard. “Well, let’s see… You don’t mind if I name you, do you?”

A servant drags a soapy sponge across his arm. “No, Your Majesty. I’d be quite honored.”

Rudolf hums and looks up at the ceiling. “A name… a name… Ah!” He leans forward in his chair, a little glint in his eye. “Ezekiel! A good, strong name. What do you think, boy?”

It sounds nice, in all honesty, and he says so. He supposes there are worse things he could have been named, so he is glad that the emperor seems to have some taste. He remembers Tatiana teasingly saying the most ridiculous of names between their study sessions, and can’t help but smile at the thought of her.

“Are you thinking about that girl?” Rudolf asks.

Ezekiel frowns. “I am not. What, a man can’t smile without thinking of someone?”

Rudolf shrugs, lips twitching. “Well, I’ve found that it’s usually because they are thinking of someone. Usually. I apologize for assuming.”

He’s not about to admit that he was thinking of her. He doesn’t want to admit to himself that his feelings may go over the borders of platonic. Tatiana deserves better than a penniless, amnesiac wretch like himself.

* * *

 

Three days later, Rudolf makes him a general, so “penniless, amnesiac wretch” is kind of out the window.

“General?” Ezekiel blinks, grimacing. “Sir, what-?”

“You’re a soldier,” Rudolf explains over dinner. “Clearly. A well-trained one, too. You got more than a few hits on me when we did swordplay yesterday, and don’t think I don’t know that you were hold back.”

He flushes and looks down to his meal. Of course he had been holding back; it’s not proper or polite to beat an old man to the ground, especially when he is your benefactor and the emperor. So, even though he had felt the instinct coursing through his marrow, felt every urge to ruthlessly batter his opponent and show his dominance on the battlefield, he’d held himself together and let Rudolf be the one to do the beating.

“Of course, you won’t be the head general of the region I’m sending you to,” the emperor continues. “More of a trainee at this time, I suppose. I’m putting you under Jerome, the man who arrested you.”

Ezekiel thinks that’s an extraordinarily poor idea.

“I’m sending you there because it’s where you came from,” Rudolf explains, like he has read his mind exactly. “I wouldn’t want to keep you from that nice Tatiana girl you keep speaking of.”

He quietly helps himself to another hunk of bread, desperately keeping the image of her lips out of his mind.

“You’ll be a trainee until you’ve proven yourself further, and more importantly, until you’ve become immersed in our culture.” Rudolf sets down his fork and leans back in his chair, hands folded below his chest. “It’s important to understand the culture, would you not agree?”

“Yes, sir. I agree.”

“You must also become fluent in the language. You’ve had a good start on the very basics, thanks to your stay in that village. But, I plan on giving you more than a basic know-how of my country.”

Rudolf lifts a hand and waves it. There are two guards standing by the door, and one of them picks up her lance and strides over to the table in perfect form. She waits there, almost completely hidden from Ezekiel’s sight by her tall fur collar and heavy cloak draped over her armor.

Rudolf lowers his hand, allowing her to stand at ease. “This is your tutor, I suppose I should say. Your assistant. She will help you learn to read, write, and speak Rigelian, and will also function as an interpreter and translator, if you want her to.”

The woman is tall, with dark red hair braided over her shoulder. Below her cloak she wears heavy sapphire armor. Even with Rudolf’s permission to stand at ease, she is still completely straight and imposing. Her eyes are cold, but not unfriendly. There is an intelligence deep in their depths that Ezekiel finds as she fixes her gaze on him.

“I am Elisabet,” she introduces with a little bow of her head. “You are the foreigner everyone has spoken of?”

“Elisabet,” Rudolf scolds. “Be polite to your new superior.”

Elisabet nods politely, and then turns back to Ezekiel. “Apologies, sir. I am here to help you with whatever you need as you adjust to Rigelian culture.”

“You speak Archanean very well,” he replies. “Any reason?”

“I am half-Talysian,” she explains. “A small island kingdom off the coast of Archanea, where my father was born. I speak the tongue of that country as well as I do that of Rigel.”

Ezekiel puts his own meal to the side, anxiously wringing his hands together on the table. “What is Archanea like?”

She raises a brow. “I could not say. My father was born there, but I am born of Rigel. I’ve been there perhaps once, in my early childhood. But, Valentians such as myself are told that it is a good place. Fraught with a war at the moment, but a good place.”

A war. He can’t help but wonder if that has anything to do with him or the scars on his body.

* * *

 

It’s another two weeks before he is back at the village, much to Jerome’s chagrin, and he has Elisabet at his side. Every night by the campfire, she would pull out books on Rigelian language and culture. Ezekiel finds that she is a firm and strict teacher, but also kind. Never, ever would he describe her as “gentle,” however. Kind, but firm, and always ready to slice a Terror in half with her battle axe.

“Fast learner,” she’d described him at the end of their first week together. “Very fast. You are a smart man. But, you are still pathetically awful at sentence structure.”

But, at the end of the two weeks they are on the road, Elisabet admits that his sentence structure has improved.

“It feels awkward coming back here,” he mutters at the entrance to the village. “I haven’t seen Tatiana in over a month now.”

“Tatiana is the woman who found you?” Elisabet asks. “You speak of her so fondly. Don’t tell me you two had some romance before Jerome snatched you up?”

“Of course not,” he snaps back. “Wouldn’t you say it’s impolite to have any sort of relations with a girl you only knew for a month?”

She shrugs. “Sounds like old-fashioned ideas of chivalry, if you ask me. But, you did not, so I’ll shut up.”

Ezekiel glares at her, takes his horse by the reins, and heads into the village.

“We could be staying at the military base, you know,” Elisabet tells him. “There are nicer accommodations. More learning resources.”

“I don’t like that Jerome, and I won’t spend anymore time around him than necessary,” he replies. “Besides, don’t you think that a village like this one would be best for a fully immersive experience?”

“That is true. I will go where you go, and I shan’t complain. Those are my orders,” says Elisabet. “So long as you are obeying your orders and attending your military duties when necessary, not a word out of me.”

People stare at Ezekiel as he passes by, likely bewildered not only by his new clothes, his horse, and companion, but probably also by the fact that he is alive at all. Nobody says anything, however, and only move out of his way as they walk through the village to the stables. He keeps his eyes peeled for Tatiana, especially when they pass the church.

“You’re keeping a lookout for that girl,” Elisabet teases lightly.

“She is the only person I know,” he shoots back. “Don’t have such a mouth. I am your superior by the emperor’s orders.”

Elisabet shrugs. “Okay.”

He pauses, turning to frown at her. “Now, see here, ma’am, I-”

“You.”

The word is breathless, spoken so quietly that Ezekiel almost does not hear it. But, how could he not catch even the slightest sound of that beautiful, harmonic voice? How could he let any sound that passes those lovely lips slip him by? He could never, no matter the hush it was spoken in.

Tatiana stands in their path, a basket of laundry in her arms as she stares at him. She seemingly has no eyes for Elisabet, because she pays her no mind. She only looks at him, face pale like she is seeing a ghost. Ezekiel drinks in the sight of her, bare feet and white-knuckled hands, hair plaited over her shoulder in a braid, eyes wide in disbelief. Angelic as when he was taken from her, and he longs to have back the time with her that Jerome so cruelly took away.

“Tatiana,” he says. He fumbles through his mind for something else to say, a phrase Elisabet has taught him in the past two weeks, but can’t think of one when she is standing a mere eight feet away.

She makes a soft sound. The basket of laundry falls out of her arms. Another sound comes from her, a choked gasp, as she lifts her hands to her mouth in disbelief. He still doesn’t know what to say, and she seems at a loss for words herself. All he can do is say her name once more, a polite hand to his chest in the start of a bow, and it breaks the space between them.

Tatiana rushes him in the blink of an eye, lunging against him and hitting him so hard that it knocks the wind out of him for a moment. She’s crying now, loudly, her face buried in his chest while she wails. Unlike when he woke up and was so unsure of what to do when she first held him, he now wraps his arms around her, squeezing her close as he pats the top of her head. She cries harder at his touch, blubbering something too quickly for him to catch anything beyond a few words.

“She said that she can’t believe you’re alive,” Elisabet translates from behind. “And that when she came back from shopping, you were just gone. She wanted to go after you, but nobody would let her, and she’s been miserable. She was certain the emperor had you killed.”

The poor thing. Her fingers clench the fabric of his traveling cloak, and she refuses to remove her face from his chest as she cries even harder. She says something else, voice so thick and muffled that he wonders if Elisabet can pick it up.

She definitely sounds confused as she says, “I think she’s saying that she feels bad you were taken while in her care. But she’s, er, crying a little too hard to be comprehensible. Can you shut her up? People are staring at you. They’ll get the wrong impression, don’t you think?”

“Shut up,” he hisses quietly. “But, thank you for the translation.”

It might not be directly for the time being, but he can, at last, fully understand Tatiana.

“Please, stop crying,” he begs in his mother tongue, then fumbles for the Rigelian translation. “Uh- пожалуйста-?”

Elisabet steps in, quickly saying something in Rigelian that Ezekiel assumes is a translation of what he said before. Tatiana takes a deep sniffle and steps back, though she keeps scrubbing at her eyes in a way that tugs on his heartstrings. He knows it wasn’t really his fault, but he still feels like the worst person in the world for letting this sweet girl worry so terribly after his wellbeing.

“Кто Вы?” Tatiana asks Elisabet weakly, and he’s pleased that he knows something as basic as, “Who are you?”

Elisabet says something else, speaking too fast for him to catch anything except a handful of words here and there. Tatiana looks at her, still teary-eyed and sniffling while she speaks. When Elisabet finishes, after gesturing heavily between herself and Zeke, Tatiana takes his hand between her own soft ones and starts pulling him back towards the church.

“Come on,” she says, and then something else.

“I explained the jist of it to her,” Elisabet tells him while they walk, horses passed off to a stablehand. “I told her you’d be staying here. She wants to go back to the church and get you fed while I explain the rest of the story.”

“Thank you, Elisabet,” he says. “Being able to comprehend one another means more to me than you know.”

“This is only my job,” she assures, then smiles wickedly. “Those were some very endearing pronouns she was using to speak to you, you know. Take notes while we talk, why don’t you? You’re still wildly incompetent.”

* * *

 

Tatiana keeps sniffling as she cooks the meal, and she curses herself for her inability to stop the waterworks, especially in front of this new woman. She had described herself as “Ezekiel’s assistant,” and that only makes her more nervous and eager to leave a good impression. It’s her compulsory need to be liked by everyone, and her desire to come across as cool and collected in front of one of the emperor’s personal soldiers.

Over a month Tatiana has spent begging Father Alexi to let her leave. The second she’d pulled herself together after coming home from shopping, she’d gotten on her knees and begged for a horse to travel to the capital. She had cried, tried to use her status as the church’s youngest, an orphan raised there all her life, to pry what she had wanted out of him. But, unfortunately, being Alexi’s youngest had probably steeled him harder against the idea of her riding to the capital so close to the winter, with Terrors and ruffians just waiting to tear into her.

Over a month Tatiana has spent praying to the Father and Mother both for his return, even though she’d lost most of her hope with every passing day.  _ Please _ , she had prayed,  _ bring him back. He has nothing. He was in my care. I adored him. Bring him back safely. _

She spoons stew into two bowls and carries them to the table where the stranger––Ezekiel, she reminds herself, the emperor’s new favorite––and Elisabet are waiting. None of them touch the food immediately, instead stirring it around awkwardly while she brings hot glasses of kompot and a plate of blanched vegetables to them as well.

“It’s hard to swallow,” Tatiana mumbles. “They took him away to be killed, and now he returns as someone so important?”

“Better than them returning his head in a box,” Elisabet says, then winces when Tatiana puts her hands over her mouth. “Sorry!”

Ezekiel is quiet as he eats the meal, quiet, formal, and polite as she remembers him. Yet, he looks different now, changed in the short span of a month. He almost looks taller, and he looks handsome and regal with his hair trimmed and swept back, and his well-fitted uniform framing his recovering body nicely. The same man, but a better side of him, perhaps she would say. A side of him reached through better healing and care than what she can offer in her little seashore village, and the thought makes sense, but stings.

“I’ll be hanging around to teach him,” Elisabet explains. “He’s already catching onto the language well enough, but I’ll be here until he can speak, read, and write fluently. But, please, do not worry; I won’t get in your way.”

“Thank you, Elisabet,” Ezekiel says suddenly. His accent is a little thinner than it was before he left, no doubt a product of Elisabet’s strict teaching. His voice still has that smooth, calm tone to it, like a stream flowing over pebbles.

“You don’t have to worry about getting in my way,” says Tatiana. “I’ve learned to work around people while doing my chores, and I’m sure Ezekiel won’t be here a lot besides.”

“He has insisted on staying in this village,” she reminds, “and until he catches onto the language better, will be spending most of his time here to study with me and be immersed in the culture.”

“I see. But, still-”

“And when I said ‘get in your way,’” Elisabet continues, “I did not mean ‘get in the way of your chores.’”

She shoots a snide, smug glance to both Tatiana and Ezekiel, and Tatiana’s stomach flutters with butterflies and embarrassment, especially when he turns red.

* * *

 

Not a month passes before things start to go Ezekiel’s way. Tatiana has taken to calling him “Zeke,” but he glowers at anyone else who calls him that, especially Elisabet, because she says it with an overdramatic, dreamy sigh and the back of her hand pressed to her forehead, as if she’s about to faint away.

“Tatiana does not sound like that,” he defends.

Elisabet snickers and puts her hand to her forehead once more, even though he  _ just _ scolded her. She raises her voice a couple of octaves in, honestly, a pretty solid imitation of Tatiana’s voice. “Oh, Zeke, you’re so  _ strong _ and so  _ handsome! _ My golly gosh, thank you for lifting those heavy boxes for me. Oh, dearest Zeke, I-!”

Zeke pushes her off the fence she’s perched on, a bit happy when she shrieks and complains. He wonders, briefly, if this is not what is having an annoying little sister is like, and then that thought transforms into, “Did I leave a little sister behind somewhere?” And then, as Elisabet picks up a sizable pebble and throws it at the back of his head, he goes back to, “This is the worst person I have ever met, and I am oddly fond of her.”

Beyond the fact that he is getting along well with Tatiana, other things are going well. He’s almost certain that, wherever he came from, he was some military official. When he looks at numbers, reports, armories and training grounds, he feels at home. He feels assured, like he knows what he is doing, and he catches onto the tasks far too easily for them to be something that is new to him. Jerome seems bitter at his competence, and Zeke quickly comes to realize that it is because Jerome refuses to be competent himself.

It takes a few weeks for the soldiers to warm up to him, and he doesn’t blame them. If he were suddenly thrust under the command of an obvious foreigner who still needs to have every other sentence translated for him, he would be wary as well. But, a few weeks, a few battles together, and some clear signs of being better than Jerome in almost every sense, and they treat him as one of their own. While Elisabet teaches him proper grammar, formal pronouns, and deliveries––everything that a man of his station should know––they teach him colloquial language and slang. To be honest, he finds that speaking informally isn’t comfortable to him, but he appreciates it regardless.

A group takes him out to the closest town and to an alehouse. He finds during that occasion that he’s shockingly good at holding his alcohol; at least in comparison to his men, that is. They become loose-tongued and clumsy quickly, but remain good and proper company. A few drinks in and they turn to talking about their significant others over the clamor of the alehouse, and Zeke is glad he is able enough with the language to keep up with what they are saying.

“My wife is definitely a better cook than yours.”

“My husband could beat yours up in a second, no contest!”

“Hey, hey, my wife made this scarf for me a couple days ago. It’s not the best, but isn’t it nice?”

It’s more bragging than anything, but it’s heartwarming to hear them speak so affectionately. He even finds himself a little jealous to be so far out of the realm of the conversation.

“Oh, sorry!” A pegasus knight looks at him over the rim of her tankard, appearing embarrassed. “We didn’t leave you out, did we?”

Zeke shakes his head, content to not say anything, and they are fine with that. They know that he understands the language better than he speaks it, so when he doesn’t say anything, they know it is for that reason.

“Well, the general is a handsome man,” one of his paladins comments. “Don’t just assume he doesn’t have someone just ‘cause he’s only been here a few months. I’m sure plenty of people are tripping over themselves for a piece.”

Zeke struggles to put together a sentence through the haze of alcohol, then says, “I wouldn’t, ah, say it that way.”

“Do you have your eye on anyone, though?” the pegasus knight asks.

The image of beautiful, sweet eyes comes to mind. The alcohol in his system encourages him to speak about Tatiana at length, to write sonnets about the flush of her cheeks, the softness of her eyes, the shape of her lips. He doesn’t really know how to say what he feels, so he keeps it to himself, but another two orders of beer, courtesy of his soldiers, gets him talking.

“A girl, in the village,” he mumbles, finally having reached the point where the alcohol coaxes all too much out of him. “Beautiful.”

A collection of delighted sounds rises out of his men. Normally, he would scold them for being so familiar with a superior, but they’re off-duty and the beer is too good for him to care about anything except Tatiana, beautiful Tatiana, perfect Tatiana.

“She has beautiful eyes.” He’s slurring his words a little, and the next round of whiskey brought to the table doesn’t help. “Soft hands. The prettiest hair I’ve ever seen, like- like the sea.”

“I think he’s got it pretty bad,” someone teases. “But, seriously, Viktor, take that whiskey away from him. You’re going to give him alcohol poisoning.”

Viktor complies, gently coaxing the tall glass away from Zeke, who doesn’t resist. He knows he’s had enough; the issue is he’s had too much already, and now he can’t stop talking. Between his inability to speak fluently and the spirits having their way with him, he’s sure he doesn’t make much sense, but he feels he could write endless amounts of poetry about Tatiana in this moment, and he can’t shut up.

“She’s a… goddess?” he mumbles, then nods. “That’s the word. Heavenly. Perfect.”

“Do you think he’ll remember this later?”

“Hell if I know. Let the man relax.”

He feels emotional now, thinking of the way she sometimes cards her delicate, healing fingers through his hair. “I- I want to touch her. But that makes me feel bad. I shouldn’t want to do anything to her. She’s… good.”

“We should’ve stopped two rounds ago. Who’s gonna take the fall if he remembers this?”

“Viktor.”

“Viktor.”

“Viktor.”

“Oh no.”

Zeke comes to his senses a little bit when another patron bumps him from behind. He shakes his head, massages one of his temples, and mumbles, “My deepest apologies. I’m, um- I am done for the night.”

“Oh, you bet you are!” A hand grabs his shoulder, yanking him away from the table. He’s not all too pleased to see Elisabet when he’s trying to make a connection with his men, but now he’s got a way home, so that’s good.

“Elisabet,” he mumbles. “Why are you-?”

“We had a lesson on formal sentence composition tonight, and we were going to work on your pronunciation! And you ditched me?” She is fuming mad as she pulls him off the bar stool, hand fisted in his collar. “To come and wax poetic about a woman?”

“I forgot,” he says earnestly. “I am very sorry. Can we still do the lesson?”

“As if,” Elisabet jeers. “You’re slurring your words all over the place, and look at you! You can barely stand. I cannot believe you would behave so badly.”

“Please, go easy on him,” someone at the table says. “We insisted he come out with us, and we kept buying him drinks. It’s our fault, honest.”

Elisabet glares at the table, then something in her face softens as she swings one of Zeke’s arms over her shoulder. “Fine, fine. One night won’t kill anybody. Come on, and don’t crush me.”

He gets out of the alehouse and into the open streets of the town, blinks, and then he wakes up back in his bed at the church.

Zeke’s head is spinning. He’s glad it’s dark, because he doesn’t know if his pounding skull could take bright light. His body feels numb and tingly, and he finds that it hurts to move. He also finds that he’s been stripped of his uniform for the most part, his shirt is unbuttoned most of the way, and his boots are gone.

A cold cloth pats his forehead. He grimaces as he pulls away from it, then relaxes when he hears, “I’m sorry. You’re all sweaty. I was trying to clean you.”

“Tatiana,” he mumbles thickly.

“Don’t try to get up,” she warns right before he does, in fact, try to get up. “Elisabet tells me you had a lot to drink. You poor thing. Lie back down, let me take care of it.”

His fuzzy gaze fixes on her. She’s beautiful in the early morning moonlight coming through the window. It shines nicely on the skin her off-shoulder nightgown exposes, brightens her rainy-day eyes. All of her makeup is removed, but her lips are still such a heavenly, peachy color, so cute and perfect that he wonders if they don’t also taste like peaches. Tatiana leans in, stroking his bangs away from his face as she pats the sweat off of his forehead again. The angle gives him the slightest view of her cleavage, and he turns away to be polite.

“Don’t fuss,” she whispers. “I hope you at least had fun when you went out. I’m glad you’re getting used to being here.”

Zeke hums something. When she leans over him a little more, a strand of hair falls over her shoulder and brushes his bare chest. He reaches up without thinking, clumsily tucking it back into place, and traces his fingertips over her cheek.

“Beautiful,” he mumbles. “You’re more beautiful than the sun and the stars, angel. I adore you.”

He doesn’t fully realize what he is saying, and Tatiana definitely doesn’t either. She crinkles her nose and looks at him, a tilt to her head, but smiles and pats his cheek as she stands from the bed.

“Sleep,” she urges. “Good night.”

* * *

 

Zeke remembers the second he wakes up what he said and stumbles out of his room with only one boot on to try and find Tatiana. He doesn’t know how he’s going to salvage his dignity when he told her something as overdramatic and cheesy as “you are more beautiful than the sun and stars,” but he’ll figure out something on the fly.

Yet, when he bursts into the kitchen, sputtering, “I’m so sorry for what I told you last night, I-,” Tatiana only looks at him in confusion.

“You switched over to your native language right after you said my name,” she tells him. “It sounded really nice, but I haven’t a clue what you said. Why are you sorry? Was it bad?”

Zeke blinks at her once, twice, and thanks all the gods above for saving him from endless embarrassment. Confessing is embarrassing enough, but to do it while hopelessly drunk is even worse, and not polite at all. He relaxes and says, “Oh, it was really nothing. To be honest, I don’t even remember exactly what I said. I was just worried I said something rude while so heavily intoxicated.”

“No harm done,” she assures him. “Now, sit down. You’ve probably got a hangover, and, lucky for you, I’ve got the perfect cure.”

They sit down for breakfast and Tatiana gives Zeke a cup of something that smells foul, but works wonders, and they go over a language book. The air between them is casual and friendly again, but he cannot get the look of her illuminated in the moonlight out of his mind.

* * *

 

“You’re so quiet,” Tatiana tells him. She’s walking along the stone wall framing the path, arms held out as she balances. Zeke has a hand ready to steady her if she loses her balance. “Still not confident?”

“I don’t want to sound uncultured,” he admits. “I’m an- Gods, what is the word? The closest word I know is ‘fancy,’ but I don’t know if that really means what I want to say.”

“You’re an eloquent speaker?” she guesses. “I can imagine.”

Zeke watches as she puts one foot in front of the other. “‘Eloquent.’ If that means ‘formal,’ then yes.”

“You don’t have to be so stiff,” Tatiana assures. “It’s okay.”

He rolls a sentence around in his mind, carefully picking out his words. In front of Tatiana especially, all he wants is to sound perfect. “I want you to- to think I sound good.”

Tatiana smiles. “I already think that.”

* * *

 

“It’s not fair that you have to just learn my language,” Tatiana tells Zeke one day. “Teach me yours.”

He refuses at first, saying that it’s not worth her time. But she wears him down with a little begging and persuasion, and eventually, he agrees to sit down with her a couple times a week and try to teach her some Archanean. The language sounds smooth, and it flows easily, but it sounds very different from her native Rigelian. There are words and pronunciations that her tongue trips over, and more than once Zeke laughs at her when she tries to speak.

“I’m trying,” she protests at a lesson. “You’re way smarter than me. You’ve picked up Rigelian so easily, and meanwhile, I can’t even say the word ‘door’ in your language.”

“There is the matter of me being fully immersed here,” Zeke responds. “I have no other choice. Elisabet cannot be my translator forever.”

“You speak so well for only being here a few months,” says Tatiana. “You amaze me. If I was in your position, I don’t know what I would do.”

He smiles, but it’s a little hollow. “Elisabet says something like, ‘We take what the gods give us.’ Did I say that right?”

“Yes.” She looks down at the table, squinting at the book between them. “I’m sorry you’re here.”

He scrawls something on a paper. “Do not be sorry, my friend.”

“I’m sure you’d much rather be home,” she says, quieter. “I’m sure you’d like that much more than being stuck in the middle-of-nowhere in a foreign country.”

“I don’t mind,” he insists. “Nobody has come to look for me. So, perhaps I am more needed here. Do you not think?”

They don’t talk about it anymore, because Tatiana can sense that it makes him uncomfortable to know that there is a big gap in his mind where his entire life should be. When she says, “I’m sorry,” or anything relating to his situation, he looks distant, pained, even if he tries to cover it up a second later. They instead focus on their language lessons, which become less focused on Rigelian as he grows more and more accustomed to it, and more focused on Archanean.

Much like she did in the first weeks of his arrival, Zeke brings objects and teaches her what they are, or draws them out for her if they are too big to bring to the table. They start out with basic things like food, buildings, animals, colors, and then she notices that the objects are turning to gifts. A bouquet of roses (“Un bouquet de roses,” he says. “Take them back to your room with you.”), a white silk hair ribbon (“Ruban à cheveux. Can you repeat that back? Let me tie your hair back with it while you try.”), a pair of beautiful evening gloves, (“Gants. It’s getting cold outside. Mind your hands.”)

It’s flattering, and she wonders just what it means. Is this obligation? Is his way of communicating thanks to her showering her with gifts of all varieties? Is this just platonic, just Ezekiel’s mere kindness?

Or, she wonders, is this more? Is this––dare she say––romance?

The thought frightens her so terribly, even though it makes her stomach leap with glee, that she asks to stop the lessons. He looks so guilty when she tells him, and she regrets it instantly. But, she knows he is not here to fall in love with a poor saint from a seashore village. He is here to learn the language, the culture, and to move along.

He is not here for her, and she cannot tempt him away from what he needs to do.


End file.
